ninjarealist wrote:Not that they are overpowered but Northerners are totally beastly in 1.6. The main difference is that giving assassins marksman makes it a lot harder to mount continuous effective offense against them.

Agree, I am always having hard time to kill those assassins with poisonous marksman.

Recruitment costs have been determined over the course of many years of playtesting. There is no formula, there is just experiance.

First of all, I will agree to play anyone who has problems with the drake vs undead match-up as drakes.

Secondly, I'm still not sure why everyone has such problems with the assassins marksmanship. The assassin was already very likely to hit at least once. The marksmanship just makes it so that it works reguardless of what the targets defence and improves the odds that the assassin will hit more often for relativly little damage.

"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."

Velensk wrote:Secondly, I'm still not sure why everyone has such problems with the assassins marksmanship. The assassin was already very likely to hit at least once. The marksmanship just makes it so that it works reguardless of what the targets defence and improves the odds that the assassin will hit more often for relativly little damage.

I don't think anyone has a problem with it, but against units with really poor resistance to blade, the marksmanship can make slayers extremely deadly. I think this becomes most evident in the knalgans or loyalists matchup. Assassins used to be ok against thieves/footpads and duelists but now they just wreck on them. An assassin at night can take off almost half of a footpads HP in one turn even when they are standing on good terrain. Not great for killing them by themselves, but perfect for landing that often elusive finishing blow. I don't think the usefulness of a ranged, poision attack with marksman can be understated when playing against unit types with high defenses.

hi guys, im a very newbie here. i ve played northeners most of the time and i really have trouble with drakes and elves(however, i most often have trouble in the game x). Im playing Isars cross most of the time. Drakes seems to me just an imba. high hit point units with powerful attack and fast speed combined with terrain ignoring means that these draconic dudes always strike first, focus their attack and kill a couple of my units, suffer hp loss without death and then retreat. It just seems to me that units with such a high speed shouldnt have so much damage and hp. not to mention fire breath which makes sure you ll suffer each time you attack. i have no idea how to beat a drake player, they always rush on isars and there is really no way to keep all your units alive. when you suffer first attack and then fight back it all gets even worse since they return damage always. lol, the only word which comes to mind when i play vs drakes is suffer x

Fighting elves is allot about understanding how terrain words and how to fight with/against it.

Against drakes depends allot on the map you're on. Drakes are allot more expensive than northerners. Time of day is very important in that match-up, try to avoid engaging them to head on till night.

Also, Isar's Cross isn't the best map for compeditive multiplayer, it is not very well balanced and is mainly kept around because it is very popular. If you can't deal with a drake rush on isars, pretty much any map is bigger and allows more freedom to try to fight under ideal conditions. Please do not base your balancing concerns on isar's cross games.

Ideal conditions for northerners against drakes are at night with a horde ready to either bash down the drakes by shear numbers or force them to retreat from their villages allowing you to outnumber them even worse.

"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."

My brother claims that the Rebels cannot beat (or have an unfairly hard time against) the Loyalists on Freelands. Specifically, he points to Loyalist cavalry moving down the right side or up the left side to attack, taking advantage of the open spaces to steal several villages and potentially force the Rebel leader to retreat from his keep. He won't play to prove his point, though, and I'm having difficulty refuting it (straight up numbers aside, theory-noth isn't really my cup of tea). I spent a while looking for replays, but I couldn't find any that served the purpose. Is he correct?

No. The freelands isn't a great map for rebels, but a rebel player who plays properly shouldn't have troubles with cavalry cutting off his retreat. It is definatly possible for a rebel player to outplay a loyalist player if he knows what he's doing. Things to keep in mind

-In general with the exception of cavalry your force is faster (unless he is very fencer happy for some reason), but cavalry are vulnerable to archers. Use this to fight at night as much as possible and don't let yourself get flanked.
-If you can slow your enemies units down just before they try to disengage for night, then you've effectivly won yourself a unit.
-Do not buy mages. Archers are faster, tougher, cheaper, and sometimes do more damage (especialy against cavalry. For offensive purposes it's better to swarm your enemy at night and try to press through to the woods.
-Woses are primaraly a defensive unit, but don't be afraid to use them offensivly.

"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."

Also, even if the map has a very slight advantage for loyalists, that just makes it better to get good w/ all factions--as the (few) tourneys we have include multiple maps per match, counterpicking factions on maps you like/dislike can only help you.

re: drakes and undead/dwarves,

until you beat people consistently to demonstrate and abuse the alleged problem, all the theoretical knowledge you may possess loses to simple results.

...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

Velensk wrote:I'm still not sure why everyone has such problems with the assassins marksmanship. The assassin was already very likely to hit at least once. The marksmanship just makes it so that it works reguardless of what the targets defence and improves the odds that the assassin will hit more often for relativly little damage.

I find that the assassins' marksmanship can be very effective against hard-to-hit units that are on terrains that offer 70% defense. I'm still getting the feel for 1.6, so I'm still not convinced that this unbalances the faction (perhaps the faction is even better balanced with it). Slayers will always be fodder for Dwarvish Berserkers (although obviously not every faction has those). I find that one good strategy for dealing with the new marksman assassins (most of my 1.6 anti-assassin experience comes from the Legend of Wesmere, which I excitedly began playing as soon as I got 1.6.1) is to be aggressive. Say you're playing as the Elves in a heavily-forested map (sound like something out of Legend of Wesmere?). The assassin has a 60% chance to hit any given time while on attack, but only 30% chance to hit while on defense as marksmanship only affects the unit's attack, not defense. This means that when you are attacking with ranged magical (some leveled-up elvish shaman), you have a 70% chance to hit each time (a 97.3% CTH) , but only a 65.7% chance to be poisoned (you'll escape un-poisoned a little over a third of the time).

In other words, you have always been and always will be fairly likely to get poisoned when you attack or are attacked by an orcish assassin, but the difference that marksmanship makes is that instead of having something like a one-third chance of escaping un-poisoned (if you're well-defended, as most factions have at least some unit that gets 70% defense somewhere), you have a very small chance of escaping un-poisoned when attacked by an orcish assassin. That being said, I must say that the best strategy when dealing with a matchup between any marksmanship unit and a highly-defended unit is to be aggressive, whether the marksman belongs to you or your opponent.